All Pishtosh Jindal did last night was prove that being a Rhodes Scholar ain't what it's been cracked up to be. He's evidently dumb as a box of (non volcanic) rocks, and proud of it.

Actually the Repiglicans are the party of CORPORATE HEMMOROIDS .. OOZING, HISSING, HEMMOROIDS ..

Whats really funny is that at 9:00pm the History channel had a documentary on Krakatoa last night.

Well, first of all--the money was for a variety of USGS activities and projects-volcano monitoring one small part of it (perhaps as little as 6 million).

"Stream gauges" was another spending category of that USGS allocation(could someone tell Mr. Jindal he's at the ass-end of one of the "floodingest" rivers in the US).

Second, has he ever heard of Mt. St. Helens?

Has he heard of Hawaii? Alaska?

Has he even heard about world-wide climactic effects from volcano eruptions?

And, wasn't Fox news recently frothing about a possible giant eruption from the Yellowstone area? That could change the world for decades, if not forever?

The GOP core, the W-Cheney-Limbaugh-Coulter deadheads, have ALWAYS been Beavis and Butthead.

The current Republican Party has denounced science as we all know and ignored Science when Katrina was predicted. Therefore what can we expect from Jindal showing any interest in the science of volcanoes and the devastation it can wrought.

...it's also worth noting that while "Bobby" was wailing about wasteful volcano monitoring and how national defense is being trashed, that that "wasteful" volcano monitoring saved the lives of thousands of American service personnel and millions of dollars worth of military equipment when it predicted the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. What a moron.

Piyush/Kenneth has also sneered at buying hybrid vehicles for the federal automobile fleet -- noting, "how is that stimulus?" or somesuch. Of course, the jobs saved in the auto companies, parts companies, and benefit derived from ramping up hybrid production is silly, how stupid of me.

Republicans don't need no stinking scientists trying to learn how to save lives by observing reality. Republicans create their own reality. Last night Jindal proved he is an idiot. After telling the uninsured of his state that his political ideology demands that he turn down money they could use to buy food and shelter for their families, last night's performance cemented his growing reputation for being a heartless, out of touch, ignorant fool. As my wife simply said, "he's a Republican."

For Mr Jindal, directly from Fox News:

(quote)

Forces brewing deep beneath Yellowstone National Park could be making one of the largest volcanoes on Earth even bigger, a new study reveals.

In the past decade, part of the volcano has risen nearly five inches, most likely due to a backup of flowing molten rock miles below the planet's crust.

While the rise may not be noticeable to the casual hiker, the activity may have cracked the crust in the park's famous Norris Geyser Basin (NGB), leading to the formation of new fumaroles — holes that vent smoke and gas — and the reawakening of some of the area's geysers, including Steamboat, the largest geyser in the world.

Yellowstone last erupted about 640,000 years ago, spewing 240 cubic miles of material. Despite the newly discovered activity, researchers don't expect it to erupt any time soon.

Eventually, however, it could explode again as a super-volcano that would destroy life for hundreds of miles around and coat the entire country in ash.

(end quote)

What's Katrina next to that?

More on Yellowstone:

http://www.unmuseum.org/unmain.htm

Aside from the question of whether volcano monitoring is worthwhile, to me, the astounding thing about "budget hawks" on the right is their innumeracy. The US ran up an extra $4 trillion during the 8 years of the Bush administration, thanks to a ruinously expensive, unnecessary war in Iraq and thanks to huge tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. If the Bush tax cuts are not allowed to expire, they will cost another $4 trillion by 2018.

In light of these figures, Republicans are trying to get credit for fiscal responsibility by pointing out a few hundred million dollars of what they consider wasteful spending. Let's do the division, people: $4 trillion/$100 million = 40,000. So if Bobby Jindal can come up with another 39,999 examples of wasteful spending, then maybe we can make some headway on eliminating the deficit.

Assuming you want to balance the budget, (which most economist don't advise during a recession), you can't do it by snipping away at wasteful spending. You have to tackle the big items: military spending, health care costs, tax rates. The budget probably cannot be balanced without raising taxes. Republicans promising to cut taxes, keep military spending where it is, and also cut the deficit are just peddling snake oil.

While we're at it, we should probably get rid of the National Weather Service: We don't need to waste our money on "predicted" tracks of hurricanes.

I took this to be a slam at our Hawaiian President.

After all, he didn't slam tropical storm monitoring, or storm cloud monitoring. Nope, the natural disaster he picked applies in the USA primarily (although not exclusively) to Hawaii.

Everyone knows:

- Science is for wimps. Real men know that 'belief' is far superior to science.

- Monitoring volcanoes is a waste of money. So too is the monitoring of weather by NASA & NOAA. Jesus will protect those who deserve protection.

- Katrina demonstrated that the federal government should stay out of state & city affairs. New Orleans & Louisiana should repay the money spent by the feds & the Core of Engineers should remove the levees that they built.

- The only problem with our economy is that the rich do not have enough money. And the answer is to cut the top tax brackets & corporate tax rates & eliminate capital gains taxation & eliminate the death tax.

- The Federal deficit is a terrible thing & should be solved. And the solution is to 'fix' social security by cutting benefits & raising payroll taxes.

- All taxes are bad. Except of course payroll taxes - those should be raised - as long as they continue to not be collected on income much over $100K.

What's sad is that he graduated from Brown University with a degree in Biology! And considered medical school...

So maybe we could have a televised debate between Jindal, Palin, and Gingrich on whether to cut volcano monitoring in Alaska, or river and hurricane monitoring for Louisiana, or all three.

The Republicans have had knives out for the USGS since the days of Reagan, Watt, and Gingrich.

Beavis & Butthead resent the comparison.

Buttmunch.

Steve Benen quoted Paul Krugman: "The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead."

Remember that the hardcore Republican base invented the term "dittoheads" to describe themselves.

They are actually proud to proclaim themselves weak-minded, ignorant, gullible dupes of corporate-sponsored propaganda.

And it's probably not a stretch to say that the research and scientific discovery being funded for the USGS and "volcano monitoring" just might bleed over to say, earthquake monitoring. Of course, that covers the leftist state of California, and we know the GOP doesn't care about that.

Cornholio '12! A chicken in every pot, teepee for every bunghole.

I live in WA state. Perhaps Mr Jindal doesn't care whether one of our volcanoes is about to go off, but I sure as heck do!

Shorter GOP platform: Science bad! Jobs bad!

Running for high school president in the land of the eternal sophomore...

Jindal's remarks rank with Palin's ignorance about fruit fly research. And Krugman is right that the politics of the GOP right now consists of snickering at stuff they think sounds funny.

But there is real danger here.

Fifty percent of our nation lacks a high school diploma. Until that is remedied, we will always be a nation tottering on the brink of a Palin-Jindal natural disaster.

That's one of the reason why I found Stephen Carter's NYTimes op-ed We are not cowards, we're just loud, so interesting. He writes quite correctly:

This difficulty, however, is not limited to race. There are few issues of any importance that are not reduced, in public dialogue, to sloganeering and applause lines. Whether we argue over war or the economy, marriage or religion, abortion or guns, we reduce our ideas to just the right size for the adolescent tantrum of the bumper sticker.

True enough. But no where does he consider that a nation of high school dropouts is ill-equipped to handle the logical and rhetorical demands of a democracy. That is why last night, when Barack equated quitting on high school to quitting on one's country, was an epic, revolutionary moment. That was the gauntlet man!

It was volcanic, earth-shaking stuff...
Am I the only one that felt its tremble?

And then they cut any reference from the 'official transcript' on the Fox News web site:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/25/transcript-gov-jindals-gop-response-obama-address/

Peter VE: While we're at it, we should probably get rid of the National Weather Service: We don't need to waste our money on "predicted" tracks of hurricanes.

This is a good suggestion. Jindal can cut volcano monitoring if he'll also agree to cut hurricane tracking.

Wait, he'd probably actually agree to that, so never mind.

What's sad is that he [...] considered medical school... -- r_m, @15:00

But, when all was said and done, wisely decided to save himself some money an to learn exorcisms instead. Exorcisms are much cheaper and faster to learn than, say, anatomy, and work as well or better.

All he now wants is for the rest of us to follow his stellar example -- low tech solutions are the answer, people! Can't you see that?

give him some credit. at least he didn't cite nonexistent funding to protect a marsh mouse or some other nonsense.

I was not able to stomach Jindal for very long, so I did not make it through his babblings. The thing that struck me most was his tone. It was as if he was talking to children or cretins, using his words to reach through the television and stroke the egos of the ignorant.

His speech could be summed up as "You don't want *that*, do you? We think that's *bad*." All while wearing a giant foam hand with the words "America is No. 1!" on it. Anyone following that guy is a moron.

It's only a matter of time until Biden refers to Jindal as someone who only says three things in a sentence: a noun, a verb and Hurricane Katrina.

This is part of a consistent pattern with Jindal. Never forget that he has a degree in Biology (and therefore clearly knows better), but he is nonetheless happy to push for creationism in schools in Louisiana. Therefore he's clearly willing to sacrifice science and reality in order to pander to the Delusional Republican Base.

Now if Volcano EXORCISM had been in the stimulus bill, Bobby Jindal would surely have gotten behind that! Talk about voodoo economics.

the GOP has rarely been a party of good ideas.

the last one that they had was eisenhower's cessation of combat operations in korea.

Beavis/Butthead '12

Steve's link to Andrea Thompson's article had a few gems at the end...

"Volcanoes, of course, aren't the only potential natural disaster that scientists monitor to give people warnings of imminent danger. Hurricanes, tornado-producing storms, earthquakes, tsunamis and flooding events are also watched and forecast.

"While those predictions can result in mitigating the damage and losses that result from natural disasters, the research is only useful in a practical sense for residents if authorities pay heed to it. For instance, in the case of Hurricane Katrina, the Natural Hurricane Center was watching the situation like a hawk, but the subsequent preparations and responses by authorities was insufficient to prevent wholesale destruction of large parts of New Orleans and the loss of more than 1,800 lives."

The problem isn't the "something called 'volcano monitoring,'" it's the idiots who don't see the value of science (looking at you Jindal) that render all the monitoring moot. You'd think someone of Indian heritage would have recognized the importance of tsunami monitoring after the Indian Ocean horror of some years ago.

I live in Washington State, about 3 hours from Mt. St. Helens and about 1 1/2 hours (gulp) from Mt. Rainier. My husband and I were looking at each other in astonishment when we heard about the sneering at "volcano monitoring." Believe me, this is a VERY big issue around here.

beckya57 is correct. I posted about Mt. Rainier earlier on an earlier post. Mt. Rainier is an active volcano, is huge, and covered with glaciers, and expected to erupt in the next 200 years. It's only 57 miles from Seattle, and closer to Olympia, Tacoma and many other small cities & towns. Millions would be affected by an eruption. Jindal is an idiot.

Not to be an alarmist or anything, but I wonder if Gov. Jindal has every heard of megavolcanos:

MARIE EDMONDS: At Yellowstone, they're seeing a bulging of the Earth's surface which they have been measuring for years.

MICHAEL RAMPINO: Yellowstone erupts about every 600,000 years. So there's a cycle of filling the magma chamber, and the magma sitting there, becoming more silicic, more ripe for an eruption, and then there's an explosion.

NARRATOR: With its last eruption 640,000 years ago, and Yellowstone on a 600,000 year cycle, another eruption may not be that far off. A future eruption could devastate most of the continental U.S. and blanket ash all the way to the Atlantic Coast.

There's also one at Long Beach, CA.